Full Description
With the strengthening focus worldwide on human rights, there has been a rapid increase in recent years in the number of countries that have completely abolished the death penalty. This is in recognition that it is a violation of the right to life and the right to be free from cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. There has, simultaneously, been pressure on countries that still retain capital punishment to ensure that they at least apply the United Nations minimum human rights safeguards established to protect the rights of those facing the death penalty.
This book shows that the majority of Asian countries have been particularly resistant to the abolitionist movement and tardy in accepting their responsibility to uphold the safeguards. The essays contained in this volume provide an in-depth analysis of changes in the scope and application of the death penalty in Asia with a focus on China, India, Japan, and Singapore. They explain the extent to which these nations still fail to accept capital punishment as a human rights issue, identify impediments to reform, and explore the prospects that Asian countries will eventually embrace the goal of worldwide abolition of capital punishment.
Contents
SITUATING ASIA IN AN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CONTEXT ; 1. State Execution: Is Asia Different and Why? ; 2. The Impact and Importance of International Human Rights Standards: Asia in World Perspective ; 3. Examining China's Response to the Global Campaign against the Death Penalty ; 4. The Role of National Human Rights Institutions in Abolishing Capital Punishment: A Critical Evaluation ; 5. The Role of Abolitionist Nations in stopping the use of the Death Penalty in Asia: The Case of Australia ; THE PROGRESS SO FAR ; 6. Recent Reforms and Prospects in China ; 7. Abolition of the Death Penalty in India: Constitutional and Human Rights Dimensions ; 8. Singapore's Death Penalty: The Beginning of the End? ; 9. Progress and Problems in Japanese Capital Punishment ; PUBLIC OPINION AND DEATH PENALTY REFORM ; 10. Capital Punishment Reform, Public Opinion, and Penal Elitism in the People's Republic of China ; 11. Challenging the Japanese Government's Approach to the Death Penalty ; THE POLITICS OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN PRACTICE ; 12. Suspending Death in Chinese Capital Cases: The Road to Reform ; 13. Death Penalty in the 'Rarest of Rare' Cases: A Critique of Judicial Choice-Making ; 14. Don't be Cruel: The 'Death Row Phenomenon' and India's 'Delay' Jurisprudence
